DoubleEdge
by Threepwillow
Summary: Communication is a two way street. That can also make it a double edged...well, you know. :::Oneshot, Kurt/Blaine, OLD, written for signe chan in a LiveJournal exchange:::


(**AN: **Just a word of warning before you head into this, this fic was written in late January/early February and thus was obviously written before a lot of canon details of Kurt and Blaine's relationship fell into place, most notably their get-together over Pavarotti's casket. Read with a grain of salt!)

-xxx-

**Double-Edge**

"Ugh, I can't believe I finished that whole thing," says Kurt, clutching at his overstuffed stomach. And really, he can't. It's appalling.

"Nope," says Blaine. "I still maintain that shitty mall-food-court Chinese places make the best, most disgusting lo mein ever. It's perfect." He shoots Kurt a sidelong glance and nudges him with the corner of his shopping bag. "Besides, you didn't finish it. You ate like two-thirds of it and gave the rest to me."

"Because you are a _disposal_," says Kurt, nudging him right back.

"Hey - I am a growing boy." He raises his eyebrows expectantly - eyebrows that are still only about level with Kurt's nose - and the expression on his face is so flawlessly stoic that Kurt snorts out his laughter before he can stop himself. Taking grave mock-offense, Blaine swings his bags at Kurt again a little more forcefully than before, and Kurt rises to defend himself, and soon they're pummeling each other with The Body Shop and H&M and laughing outright as they stumble across the parking lot. Kurt finally has to stop when he realizes his Banana Republic shoebox is caving in, and he clutches his purchases to his chest and surrenders. Blaine grins victoriously and runs the rest of the way to the car, and Kurt can't do anything but chase him. As he's opening up the back door to load their armfuls in, he really wants to say something scathing, something last-laugh worthy, but he's breathless from running and laughing and a little queasy from eating so much and _then_ running and laughing so he just mutters "Best two out of three."

When he finally shuts the door, Blaine is there beyond it, leaning hard on the passenger door with one arm up by his head. Into the companionable silence between them, he says very seriously, "How am I doing?"

The look on his face is as earnest as the other expression was melodramatic; he is illuminated from behind from the setting sun, and it kind of looks like Blaine is _glowing_. Kurt has to take a deep breath, and think really hard about the answer to this question. It's early May, and they have maybe a month of school left, give or take a week or two. Kurt can safely say that Blaine is one of his _best_ friends, and definitely his best friend at Dalton, after the past semester of birthday parties and French cram-sessions and consoling each other through their narrow, agonizing loss at regionals. But once upon a time, it was mid-February, and Blaine's tender-soft voice murmured to him _I have no idea what I'm doing_ from behind a thick scarf and wide, confused eyes. Once upon a time when they went shopping Blaine didn't give the Gap a good clear berth every time they crossed past it looking for smoothies or bowties, not speaking a word about it but not needing to. And the feelings that went with that time, three months and half a world ago, they'd found a place for themselves inside of Kurt. But they'd never, ever gone away. Even now, with his _friend_ surrounded in this weird orange aura like an angel on fire, smiling, leaning on his hand and messing up his perfectly-gelled hair just so, Kurt can feel them fizzing down inside, giving him the answer.

"You're doing _amazingly_, Blaine," says Kurt, because it's true. If he hadn't done everything exactly right every step of the way, they never could have stayed as they are now. "There's seriously nothing I can imagine you doing that could get you a failing grade at this point."

Blaine licks his lips a little, and says, "Good," and kisses Kurt on the mouth.

He tastes like lo mein, and like every little February feeling coming bubbling back to the top, like shaking up a soda can.

-xxx-

Kurt wishes he could say it took them a couple of weeks to get here. That after their shopping trip and Blaine's shining halo and the best first kiss he's had yet, Kurt drove Blaine home holding hands across the gap between their seats, gave him one more little peck at the door, and promised to see him first thing Monday back at school. He'd go home blaring the happiest playlist he could find on his iPod and text all his McKinley friends about it and change his relationship status on Facebook, and slowly but surely they'd build and grow until they got to this point at a natural rate.

Nope.

They barely make it back to Blaine's house without crashing, and as soon as they've stumbled inside Kurt is gripping him just-gently-enough by the hair and sucking Blaine's warm, thick tongue into his mouth as if their lives depend on it. Blaine hums out softly through his nose and curves his fingers into Kurt's hips, and Kurt should feel embarrassed, or be worried that they're taking it so quickly, but really, they've got a lot of lost time to make up for. They could have been doing this for _ages_.

Once they make it through Blaine's bedroom door he pulls back a little and presses his forehead hard into Kurt's. "I'm an idiot," he says for about the fourth time since they left the mall, nuzzling a little.

"Yes," Kurt says, "you were an idiot," and he kisses him hard and sweet on the jaw, "but now that you've wised up, can we please just keep - ?" And they slot their lips together, and their hips together, and maneuver clumsily back onto Blaine's bed.

Once they're stationary again, things kind of slow back down. Kurt's eyes roll shut as Blaine noses down his cheek to his throat, sucking and licking tenderly at his lust-hot skin, mapping him out by taste and feel. Kurt's been dreaming of this for so long, and what it lacks in skill and finesse it makes up for in, like, _actually being real_. And besides, they're never going to get any better without practice. When Blaine's lips suddenly and shockingly find a spot that makes Kurt stiffen and inhale sharply and silently curse his need to wear such form-fitting pants all the time (_oh but who are you kidding_ says some stupid fashionista corner of his brain that hasn't yet succumbed to Blaine's mouth, _somehow_), Kurt curves his hand around the back of Blaine's neck and traps him there, pushing forward a little, a silent and kind of pathetically desperate plea for more, _more_. He feels Blaine's lips curl into a grin against his skin as he obliges, sucking harder, rolling his tongue across it, leaving Kurt kind of trembling.

At the first light, sinful scrape of his teeth Kurt tenses even harder, fingers twisting into the hair at the nape of Blaine's neck and eyes flying open, and that's when he sees it.

Kurt's been in Blaine's room three or four times before.

But there has never been a huge, ancient-looking _sword_ mounted on his freaking wall.

Like. Really. It's medieval-looking, heavy and solid, definitely meant to be functional rather than ornamental, and Kurt feels like it should probably be rusting because _that has got to be old_ but it looks like it's in...very good repair. Which makes Kurt wonder if it's actually been _used_ recently or y'know, _ever_ and he is so busy staring at the sword and being really, really weirded out that maybe he stops squirming under the admittedly delectable ministrations of his boyfriend(?) and goes kind of slack and unresponsive.

"Kurt?" Blaine murmurs against the super-sensitized skin of his throat, and his voice is lust-blown and ragged and his breath is hot and oh so close but on his wall is a big honkin' silver sword with some fancy-ass engraved handle and something about that just refuses to stop being weird.

"I'm - sorry," Kurt whispers, kissing his lips softly again but with zero of their earlier fire. "I need to drive home, I think, it's a long way away and Dad'll flip if I'm out too late even if he knows I'm just with you - "

"Kurt, shit, oh my god, no," says Blaine, running his hands over every part of Kurt he can reach and then snatching them away just as fast as if he's done something wrong. "If we're going too fast, let me know, please, Kurt, I can't have fucked this up, I _can't_ - "

"Shhh, no," says Kurt, because - _no_. "This is me with a red pen writing 'A-plus' and circling it and giving you a little sticker, that's how much you have _not_ fucked this up. It's just the thought of my dad getting the wrong ideas - the _right_ ideas, really," he amends, running his hand firm up Blaine's thigh and ducking their heads back together - "about why I'm missing my curfew, and then waiting at the door with some particularly menacing power tools the next time you come over, that's kind of a bonerkill." And wow, now that Kurt thinks about it, it really is, but it isn't the truth, and the lie sits primly at the back of his head with a neon light hovering over it, tiny but obnoxious. (But it's right behind that huge marquee that says 'YOUR BOYFRIEND(?) INEXPLICABLY HAS A GIANT SWORD MOUNTED ON THE WALL OF HIS BEDROOM,' so that's kind of taking precedence.)

It gets a mollified chuckle out of Blaine, though, and he kisses Kurt lightly again, first on the lips and then, as they pull apart, on the back of his hand. "Your dad is wonderful, but I've seen him angry at other people. I'd hate to get that pointed at me." His soft smile takes a turn for the dark. "But this definitely isn't over. I'm rain-checking this hard."

"Ditto," says Kurt, as Blaine's walking him back to the front door. "Ooh, and on the rain check..."

"Yes?" says Blaine, his hands warm and still around Kurt's waist and what is his _problem_.

"Could you wear that olive sweater we just bought you?"

-xxx-

It's out of sight, out of mind for a good while.

Kurt goes to school on Monday and this little thrill of glorious sheepishness rolls through him when he sees Blaine for the first time since their date, rocking the Dalton sweatervest with his uniform shirt sleeves rolled up to just under his elbows. He bites his bottom lip a little from the sudden unbidden urge to _touch_, and then, with a blink of sort of "duh" realization, remembers that he can. He walks a little faster than is socially acceptable over to his boyfriend (sans question marks - it is Facebook Official and that makes it real) and takes his hand, holding it softly for just a few seconds before slipping up and over his tight, wiry forearm, slowly back and forth, stroking the hair there in the wrong direction so it spikes up funny and then smoothing it out again.

"Hey," he says, crooking his mouth coyly, swaying a little.

"Hey," says Blaine back, just as wonderfully, and god, Kurt can't believe he forgot about this, even for a second.

Except that well, actually, he can. It was so long coming that Kurt sometimes felt like it would never happen at all. That he'd be trapped in this stupid never-ending limbo state, a swirling miasma of _~feelings~_ that no one would ever act on for fear of ruining what they already had. Blaine knew Kurt liked him; and let's be real, Kurt knew Blaine liked him back, long before Blaine ever did. It was just hard, when it was your best friend - a lot harder than it was when it was the star football player or the junior manager at the Gap. This was the guy who he trusted to take notes for him if he wasn't feeling well or feed his stupid bird if he had to take a late night studying in the library. This was the guy who held his bangs out of his face while he puked after Rachel's drunken house party and who wasn't afraid to yell at him or smack him in the shoulder if he said something too out-of-line at Warblers practice.

Now, well, Blaine's still the same guy. But Kurt's allowed to make out with him.

Maybe it's not so hard after all.

"We're gonna be late for class," Blaine tries to mumble against his lips, putting on his Responsible Experienced Dalton Student hat but not really getting much further. It's Thursday between sixth and seventh periods and Kurt finally couldn't stand it any more, because this? Is so much better than class.

"Mmmm, I haven't had a single tardy the entire time I've been here," he says, "and that's counting the dress-down day we had for April Fool's when I was actually allowed to come up with my own outfit. Let them give us demerits, this is _so_ worth it."

"You are such a bad influence." Blaine grins, his fingers digging into Kurt's biceps. Their mouths tangle together again and Kurt's brain kind of goes over all fuzzy. He marvels at Blaine's ability to do this, to just deftly twist his tongue deep inside of Kurt's mouth and coax him into a whining, blithering mess, his sweet warmth just blurring out all of the sharp edges, and then Kurt thinks the phrase _sharp edges_, and suddenly he has remembered the sword.

Seriously, it was up there on the wall next to perfectly _normal_ things, like a photograph of Blaine and his parents and his brother who's off in college and the calendar with all of the Warblers performance dates marked with red pen and the tasteful chair rail that went so well with his color scheme. It's so inexplicable that Kurt can't even describe it but it's so _stupid_ that he can't bring himself to say anything about it, because even he doesn't know why it's driving him so crazy. It just is.

"Maybe we should hurry off, though," he says, trying to smooth out the crinkled sleeves of his blazer. "I'd hate to wreck my perfect record now."

Blaine groans and twists around melodramatically. "You're killing me here, babe," he says, but they gather themselves and leave the men's room on the second floor of the east wing, Kurt headed to English and Blaine to physics.

And once it happens that second time, Kurt is screwed. Then it's not even just their alone time the stupid thing is interfering with, it's his out-and-about time, his _'regular Blaine'_ time. They'll be fooling around in the cafeteria trying to help Cam work out the beatbox part for this *NSYNC song they're thinking about doing as a joke and Kurt will stop laughing abruptly because he'll remember it, this ancient battle weapon that looks like it could have _killed_ people and it belongs to his boyfriend. They'll be mulling around with Mark and Jonah on this group project they have for French that they've kind of put off until the last minute and Kurt will lose his train of thought and forget how to conjugate because he has suddenly, violently tacky visions of Blaine as some stupid white knight on a giant horse whisking in to rescue him, and oh hell no he is not anybody's princess and it's _his_ daydream so why is that dress so _hideous_? The totally random totally ugly sword shifts in Kurt's brain from the giant beacon it was before to this weird sort of puzzle box: half of him is dying to open it, and figure out what in the fresh hell Blaine is doing with it hanging on his wall just all of the sudden, and the other half of him is very much convinced that he does _not_ want to know. Because this is just weird.

And stupid. _Stupid!_ Kurt and Blaine have worked through way, way more serious and emotional and Grown Up issues than what he chooses to (badly) decorate his bedroom with. They've fought to break through that friend/boyfriend barrier in a way that didn't break either of _them_, dealt with Karofsky kissing Kurt and Rachel kissing Blaine and that one weird awkward night where David kissed both of them. But Kurt's let this one minuscule, _stupid_ detail swell up to epic proportions in his mind and it won't shake itself.

They're dating. The whole school - schools, plural, really, because McKinley is still in the picture as much as ever - knows they're dating. Shouldn't Kurt _know_ why Blaine has an ugly old sword in his room? Isn't that something that kind of merits explanation to the person whose throat you're shoving your tongue down and junk you're rubbing at through his pants on a regular basis? What _else_ isn't Blaine telling him? How much of Blaine's life, hobbies, weird eclectic taste is Kurt just totally unaware of, despite the fact that Blaine has literally been closer to him than any other human being alive?

When he starts going down that road, he can't come back from it, and that's when he realizes he needs an intervention. Kurt finishes cleaning up his dishes from breakfast and texts Mercedes, knowing she should just be getting out of church and he probably wouldn't be interrupting anything.

**To:**_**Boo**_  
>So what do you do if there's something about your boyfriend that you think is incredibly strange, to the degree that it's driving you absolutely nuts, but it's also so tiny and pointless that you feel like an idiot for not just being able to get over it already on your own? But you feel like HE should have told you, and you shouldn't have to ask about it, and...ugh<p>

Her response comes quickly.

**From:**_**Boo**_  
>duz B have lyk a 3rd nip or sth?<p>

**To:**_**Boo**_  
>ew, no!<br>**To:**_**Boo**_  
>I just don't know how to bring it up. It's so dumb, Mercedes. SO dumb.<p>

**From:**_**Boo**_  
>dont ever b afraid 2 tk 2 him bout sth that bothers u. its srs. n if u dont i will! gota look out 4 my bb<p>

**To:**_**Boo**_  
>I'm almost afraid to know the answer, though...<p>

**From:**_**Boo**_  
>more afraid than u r of this fuckin things up?<p>

Well, she's got a point there. But Kurt's still freaking out, a little, mostly because he's freaking out in the first place - the fact that it even bothers him has begun to bother him, and now he's meta-freaking, which he'd thought only Rachel Berry was capable of and he's suddenly very paranoid that it's contagious and _okay that isn't helping._ Kurt decides that to overcome this idiocy once and for all, he's going to address the problem in the most ludicrous way possible, so that there's absolutely no turning back from it.

He's making it his Facebook status.

_**Kurt Hummel**__would like everyone to know that his boyfriend_ (and he totally tags Blaine in it, in case anyone has forgotten) _has an enormous ugly sword in his bedroom, and has yet to feel the need to explain why._

And he pours himself another glass of orange juice.

And he watches the comments roll in.

**Mercedes DivaNator Jones:**  
>omg, THATS wut this was about? SERIOUSLY?<p>

**Tina CC:**  
>Mike totally has katanas...but he keeps them in his closet...<p>

**David Tyree:**  
>dude, you've WORN weirder stuff than that. what gives.<p>

**Santana Lopez Bitch:**  
>What, like his dick was too big?<p>

**Sam Evans:**  
>Is it +10 against orcs? Since he's a hobbit and all that would probably help<p>

(Kurt's. Friends. Are. The. Stupidest. People. _Ever_.)

**Blaine Anderson:**  
>...Hey. So, what are you doing tonight? If I promise to wear that sweater can I cash in that raincheck?<p>

This, of course, is the only one Kurt dignifies with a response. _I'll be there in a couple of hours._

(Then, as an afterthought, _Define 'too big.' ;)_ Because four people have already liked it and Kurt will be damned if he lets them have the last laugh.)

-xxx-

Kurt doesn't even manage to ring the doorbell before Blaine has answered, standing in the doorframe looking stupidly attractive in that damn sweater and nearly making Kurt forget why he's there in the first place. He ruins that by opening his mouth.

"So I guess this is why you've been acting super weird lately."

Kurt frowns, and is suddenly very interested in the potted plant sitting on Blaine's stoop to his right. "About that."

"So if I promise to explain it all to you can you stop being weird? Because I don't like it. It's interfering with my Kurt time." Blaine's oh-so-earnest eyes, combined with how upsettingly familiar that train of thought sounds, guilt Kurt into hanging his head even further, and he follows Blaine silently up the stairs to his room. Blaine shuts the door softly behind them and then crosses over to his bed, jumping up to stand on it so he can lift the source of all this bullshit down off its brackets and heft it solidly in his right hand.

"The Anderson family is...old," Blaine begins as he steps back down. "Like, really old. You know how I am, at Dalton - Dad wanted me to go there from the start, me and Charlie, but Mom married into all of this from a way more normal place and wanted to try us at public school if she could. Charlie worked out and I...didn't." Kurt nods, a little, tries to make himself look at Blaine's face instead of the sword. He knows this story, Blaine's told it all to him before - and that suddenly makes Kurt feel simultaneously much better (maybe Blaine _has_ let him in on a lot of his life after all) and much, much worse (was he really _this_ much of an ass about everything?). "But we've always had the means, that's never been an issue, because my family is _old_.

"And so since we're old, we have a lot of pretty bizarre traditions that lots of other families don't have. The way we do our Christmases, the types of people we _deign_ to socialize with - " he puts on a pompous voice and rolls his eyes, a gesture Kurt's seen Mrs. Anderson do in a nearly identical manner several times as well - "and some weird need to pass down to every son born in the family...a sword."

He gestures with it, subtle enough that Kurt's not fearful of decapitation but still unmistakable enough that he can't pretend it didn't happen. Kurt just stares at it, loose in Blaine's grip. It unfortunately keeps being a sword.

"This is supposed to be Charlie's - I guess technically it still is Charlie's, but the OSU residence halls obviously don't allow weaponry of any kind to be kept in the dorms," he says. "So since it's always been kind of a seventeenth-birthday thing, it got to happen to me, too. I was informally knighted into my manhood as an adult Anderson, and it's been there ever since." Oh. So that would explain why it wasn't there back in March or April. Blaine's a Taurus.

"That is really stupid," Kurt says, because it is. And because he's still kind of staring at it.

"It is really stupid," Blaine admits. "You know what else is really stupid? Going for two and a half weeks - the first two and a half weeks of our _real relationship_, Kurt - without saying anything about how much it bothered you."

Kurt rolls his head up to look at him, frustrated. "Right, because it's so easy to just say 'Blaine, your _sword_ is really weirding me out' in a normal conversation."

"It was apparently pretty easy to say on Facebook!"

"That's because I didn't have you standing there _looking_ at me like I'm a total moron! I can't handle you thinking I'm any weirder than you already know me to be, Blaine. What you think about me is kind of important."

"So I was just supposed to think you were really weirded out by us crossing that friend/boyfriend line and actually starting to make out and stuff, instead."

"You were supposed to not have a freaking _sword_ in your room!"

Both of them seem to sort of realize what Kurt has just said, and how absolutely absurd it is, and if this were a romantic comedy or something Kurt's pretty sure they would both suddenly burst out laughing at how ridiculous everything was and forget the whole thing ever happened. As it is, they do the real-world equivalent, which is to kind of glance down at the sword, then up at each other, and laugh just a little, nervously, before sighing and sitting down on the edge of Blaine's bed, thigh to thigh.

"Are we really going to have our first lovers' tiff about _this_?" Kurt asks dismally.

"That might be the only thing that could make this situation even stupider," Blaine concedes. "Let's just...not. And say we did. Or don't even say we did, really."

"Oh my god, _deal._"

They fall silent for a moment or so, the bed shifting every time one of them breathes, until they're practically breathing in synch. Blaine seems to suddenly realize he's still got the sword in his hand, and he smirks, and leans it over to Kurt a little.

"Would you like to touch my sword?"

Kurt does snort out a burst of laughter at this. "Okay, _really_?"

"No, seriously. If you want. I mean, it is almost kind of cool in a lame old traditions kind of way." Blaine stands up and Kurt feels the mattress dip in his absence. He stands in the middle of the room and hefts the sword up until the tip of it stands about shoulder level. The set of his shoulders and the angle of the blade look almost..._practiced_, and Kurt goes a little wide-eyed. "The part about it that was pretty neat was that Dad made me learn how to wield it properly. I mostly just did it by recall right when he wanted me to a couple months ago, probably couldn't do any real damage now..." But the sweeping, stabbing gesture he makes is fluid and solid all at once, and Kurt can see the muscles and veins and tendons of his forearm bulging out from the weight of it where his sweater sleeves are pushed to his elbows. And oh, _wow_.

"No, you look - that's impressive," he says, trying to keep his voice from wavering, because Kurt really, really wants Blaine to be doing more of that. When his encouragement is a success, and Blaine ducks around in the center of the room into a sort of parry, torso twisting enticingly and shoulderblade jutting out just a little from his back, Kurt kind of forgets why he ever thought this sword thing was bad.

Seriously. It's a _phallic symbol._ What is his malfunction?

He jumps up to grab at his boyfriend so suddenly that he almost loses an arm for his troubles, but luckily Blaine's reflexes are dragon-slayer quick, and the sword thumps harmlessly to the carpeted floor as Blaine takes hold of Kurt's vest lapel instead. Blaine whispers a soft, teasing "_Really_ now," before crushing his mouth to Kurt's in what is probably their hottest kiss to date. Maybe it's the lack of that stupid puzzle-box floating in the back of his brain, about the sword; maybe it's because that other guilty little neon light about the lie has vanished, too, now that they're actually _talking_ about things - getting back to the way Blaine-and-Kurt should be, the way it has _always_ been, except with way more making out. Whatever it is, Kurt's all for it. They sink back onto the bed again with a loud creak, Blaine's elbows digging sharp into the quilt on either side of Kurt's head to the point where he can almost feel the subtle shifts of muscle in his arms, a hair's breadth or two from the skin of his face. It's enough to leave Kurt moaning and twisting under Blaine, and Blaine shifts his knee that's landed between Kurt's legs up even higher until Kurt has a strong, solid surface to rut himself against, because he's kind of ridiculously hard in his pants already.

He just hopes Blaine has the presence of mind not to make any more sword jokes.

(Maybe he'd better keep kissing him to keep his mouth occupied. Just in case.)


End file.
